Science, Politics, and the Framing of Modern Agricultural Technologies - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 47

(Batista et al. 2008). Gressel (2008) has argued that the conventional plant breeding
on which the GR was based has reached a yield and improvement plateau—a kind of
a “glass ceiling,” he calls it—because of the very limited set of traits with which it has
worked. He argues indeed that genetic engineering has the potential actually to recover
diversity in agricultural ecosystems.
Critics, on the other hand, including those who signed the letter to the Director-General
of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) from which we quoted in our second
epigraph, fear that the cultivation of transgenics will enhance the damage that they see as
having been brought about by the GR—through pauperization of people (because of what
are believed to be the very high costs of the technology), loss of genetic diversity, envi-
ronmental destruction, and by making nations dependent for their food security upon
Western corporations. They fear it will bring new dangers as well, especially to human
health. Thies and Devare (2007) list the major ecological concerns associated with trans-
genics as (1) the potential for “gene flow” from them to wild plant populations; (2) harmful
effects on nontargeted organisms (including humans); (3) transgenic residue persisting in
the environment with long-term negative effects; and (4) pests developing resistance to
insecticidal crops. Gene flow to wild relatives has been demonstrated in field studies—as
we shall see, this is an issue for GM rice—but as of yet it is claimed that “there are no known
substantiated harmful effects of bioengineered crops on human health or the environ-
ment” (Gregory et al. 2008, 290). Thies and Devare (2007) suggested, however, that the
development of resistance to insecticidal crops is “possible and eventually likely,” and it
seemed that they were proven prophetic when Monsanto claimed to have found resistance
to its Bt cotton in India in late 2009 (Monsanto 2010). It should be noted, however, that the
company has a financial interest in these claims, and Indian scientists working with cotton
have not found resistance to the major bollworm species.
The Green Revolution Controversy
The new varieties of wheat, at first, and then of rice, began to be disseminated widely in the
1960s, at a time when there were widespread Malthusian fears about the consequences of
the “population explosion,” and the outstripping of agricultural growth by that of popula-
tions (e.g., Ehrlich 1968). Between 1960 and 1990, however, total cereal production and
yields in developing countries doubled, outpacing population growth and bringing about
an average increase of around 25 percent in the availability of calories (Davies 2003; and
see Pingali 2012). Almost as important, from an environmental point of view, was that
the increase in food production was achieved from about the same cultivated area. The
GR saved the ploughing up of a great deal more land: it is estimated, for example, that for
India to have produced the same quantities of grain by 2000 without MVs would have
required at least a doubling of the cultivated area (Paarlberg 2010, 63). The aggregate pic-
ture seems a positive one. The weight of evidence from a range of studies across Asia also
shows that the GR achieved the trick of increasing both farmers' and agricultural laborers'